Here’s a follow-up to the post I wrote on comparing your game and scoring to the PGA Tour players. We talked about how the best in the world only hit 70% of the fairways and 65% of the greens, but they are excellent in sand saves and putting. Here’s some more condensed stats to chew on as you work to refine your short game.

Corey Pavin leads the tour in scrambling this year, saving par 66.76% of the time when he misses a green. But the others aren’t far behind him. The #50 player is still saving par almost 60% of the time, and all the way down to #125 finds a scrambling percentage over 56%. So, the lesson here is that these guys are practicing their short games a great deal so that they still make pars when they miss greens. And they are playing tough courses with fast and firm greens most of the time.

My suggestion for you is to keep a score sheet when you play, and see how you do when you miss greens. It doesn’t matter what your handicap, I’ll bet you’ll quickly see that this is where you can shave some strokes in a hurry.

Moving along with these tour stats, let’s examine putting. We talked about how these guys hit only 12-13 greens a round on average, and the above stats would indicate they are making 2-3 bogeys, but saving par on the others. But look at what they do when they have birdie putts. Bob Tway leads the tour this year with a 32.13% conversion rate – he’s making almost 1 out of every 3 birdie putts he has ! That’s remarkable. I had a solid ball-striking round yesterday and converted one of 10. Guess I need to work on putting more, huh ?

Behind Tway, the number 50 player converts at a 28% clip, and #125 still is at 26+%. So, even the #125 guy on tour converts his birdie attempts at better than 1 for 4 !

And on total putts, the tour leader is Luke Donald at 27.67 per round, with the #50 spot being 28.84, and the #125 spot at 29.40. Less than two putts difference between the tour leader and the #125 player !

My point to all this writing about tour stats is this: Keep track not just of your scores, but how you get to each one. Note your putting stats and your scrambling stats, and you’ll quickly see a very clear road map to where you can improve in a hurry. It will not take hours and hours of practice to improve your short game dramatically. Just give your short game and putting ½ of your practice time and your handicap will improve quickly.

As you probably know, I recently began a weekly Short Game podcast series on GolfSmarterTips.com, where each week we discuss an aspect of the short game, and answer questions from listeners. If you haven’t tuned in yet, please do, and send me your short game questions to be considered on the show.

One question that has come up already a few times is something like this:

“When I lay up on par fives and have a 30-50 yard pitch shot, I have a problem spinning the ball enough to make it stop”, or “I have a problem controlling my distance. What can I do ?”

My answer to these is always the same, and it’s kind of like the old joke where the guy goes to the doctor and says, “Hey Doc, it hurts when I do this”, to which the doctor replies, “Then stop doing it.”

The mid-range or “half wedge” is one of the hardest shots in all of golf to hit to your expectations. You can practice and practice all you want, but each one is slightly different so it will be hard to groove it to the precision you expect. I strongly suggest the alternative – playing to your full swing wedge distances when you are facing a short par four or hitting your second on a par five.

Last year I wrote about Zach Johnson’s strategy coming into The Masters, where he determined beforehand he would not try to hit any of the par fives in two.

But did he hit his second shots as close to the green as he could ? No.

He laid up precisely to his full lob or sand wedge distance so that he could hit full swing shots, achieving maximum distance control and optimum spin. That let him play the par fives better than any other golfer in the field, and win the green jacket.

For each of us, we should have our “comfort zone” swing with each of our wedges, which produces pretty reliable yardage nearly every time. And with my SCoR (Shot Control Routine) Method for hitting the in-between shots, we should be able to “dial in” the correct yardage by gripping down on the club a precise amount.

That’s why I’m a fan of carrying a full complement of scoring clubs. In my own game, for example, from anywhere between 70 and 117 yards, I know that I can make a comfortable full swing and hit most of my shots within 4-5 yards (only 15 feet or so) of my desired distance, by choosing the right wedge and gripping it precisely in the right place on the grip. And it only took me a couple of hours one day to build my wedge distance chart.

112 yards to the flag ? Grip down the PW ½” and swing away.

101 yards ? Full swing Gap Wedge.

80 yards ? Sand Wedge gripped down 1 inch.

You can build your short game the same way. First, develop your “comfort swing” with your wedges. I suggest that is about an 80% power swing to produce consistent distance and trajectory.

Then learn how many yards it takes off when you grip down ½” and 1”. That gives you three precise distances with each wedge.

If you carry four, like I do, that means I can hit the ball – with reasonable confidence – twelve different distances with the same swing !

I go into this process in great detail in my book, “The SCoR Method – A Simple Way to Achieve Precision in Your Short Game.” We include a complimentary copy with each EIDOLON order and sell the book on our website. Click here to read more about The SCoR Method.

Sorry, I didn’t intend this to be a sales pitch for my book, only a suggestion that the best way to master the dreaded “half wedge” is to not give yourself any more of them than you have to. Learn your comfortable full-swing distances with your wedges, dissect them even more with precise hand placement, and play to those yardages. You’ll see immediate results.

In yesterday’s paper, a sidebar column listed the statistic top ten in various categories from the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and LPGA Tour. As I looked these over, the variances from tour to tour in certain categories really stood out for me. So I thought I’d offer my observations and toss this out to you all for dialog and comment.

First of all, can you really “beat the course” from tee to green ? Most golfers spend the bulk of their practice time on long shots . . . full swings. I always offer that you should allocate a significant portion of that time to your short game and putting. Compare your objectives to the best players in the world.

The #10 PGA Tour player hits 73% of the fairways. That’s 10 times in the 14 holes that are not par threes. On the Champions Tour, the #10 spot is also right at 73%, with the LPGA Tour the #10 spot at 78%.

So, if the best players in the world only hit it in the fairway 7 out of 10 times, what should your expectations be ? 50% ? 35% ? What do you all think ?

In the Greens in Regulation category, the #10 PGA Tour player is at 68%. Just over 12 greens per round ! So, these guys can hit 11-12 greens per round and shoot scores that average 70 or so – what does that tell you about their short games ? On the Champions Tour and LPGA Tour, the GIR numbers are almost identical, but look at the scores these players are shooting !

Maybe the Sand Saves category is most revealing as to where they spend a great amount of their practice time. Up-and-down percentage from the bunker of the #10 spot is 61% on the PGA Tour, 54% on the LPGA Tour and Champions Tour. What’s your percentage ?

I challenge all of you to keep track of your rounds for a few weeks, analyze them. Of key importance are your fairways and greens stats, but really focus on your short game performance. Analyze your average putt length after a chip or pitch of 50 yards or less, and how many times you took more than three shots to get up and down from that range – those are completely thrown away shots that you can get back quickly with just a little short game practice.

Share your numbers and experience with us here over the next few weeks, OK ?

It was only after my brother and I made our trip to Scotland in 1990 that this week’s event – The Open Championship – (British Open to most) became my favorite event to watch on TV.

Once you’ve played those courses and experienced that kind of golf, it gives you an appreciation for the way the game was played . . . and invented to be played . . . centuries ago. We play a very different game here in the States than they do over there. Ours is an airborne assault, a dart game of sorts, where every shot is designed to be hit high, with spin and stop where it lands. This is very different from the ground game that defines golf over there.

One of my favorite memories of that extraordinary adventure was from Turnberry, where a ‘pearl of wisdom” was laid on me by my caddie. My brother fancies himself a comic of sorts and derives great pleasure from telling stories and jokes in the appropriate accents. So we’re walking down the fairway and he turns to our caddies and says in his newly-developed Scottish accent, “So boys, what do ye think of our ‘Scautish’ accent?”, to which my caddy replied:

“Aye, ye Americans. Ye do to the language what ye did to the game.”

In response to our inquiry as to what he meant by that, we were treated to a wonderful bit of insight into ourselves as Americans. Here’s a paraphrase of Les’ explanation that morning on the fairways of Turnberry.

“You Americans do not leave much to chance – you apply science and technology to make life so much easier and more efficient and dependable. And you’ve done the same to golf. You groom your courses to make them ‘fair’, whatever that means. You make your fairways smooth and green to eliminate the vagaries of the turf that can cause the ball to go any which way. You groom your greens to pool-table consistency. You gave bunker rakes to the game, reducing a genuine hazard to an intentional target for the pros.

“But along the way you changed the game. Golf was intended to be a ‘man against nature’ challenge. How a man handles the adversity that is a certainty on the golf course gives you measure of his soul and his integrity; an accounting of sorts of the kind of man he is inside. When you take away the risk of an unfortunate break, you strip away a great part of a great game.”

Well, I’ve thought about that little soliloquy many times since then, and came to realize that this caddy was one of the more observant men I’ve ever met. And it changed my approach to golf and the crazy bounces and breaks that even our courses present.

Fair ????? There’s nothing about this game that is fair and we can’t make it that way. And that’s a huge part of the glory of the game we love. Cherish your bad breaks for the character-builders they are and love this game for all that it is.

Oh, and as you watch The Open this weekend, pay particular attention the creativity exhibited by these players as they negotiate a little white ball over several miles of turf. You’ll see so much variety it will astound you.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to feel a little pain in my fingers of my right hand if I really get down into an iron shot and dig a deep divot. Early stages of arthritis I guess.

I’ve sure hit my share of irons shots in my life. Aggravating that is that our turf in this part of south Texas is pretty firm, even when it’s wet from rain.

So, I’ve begun to try to re-train myself to pick the ball a little more cleanly with my irons to reduce the wear and tear on my body so that I can play this great game that I truly love . . . for the rest of my life.

I see it as “preventive maintenance” for my golf game. Making a change like this is not easy, but I’m getting there. As I work on this transition, it’s interesting that I’m seeing some side benefits of this more clean contact in addition to the reduced stress on my hands.

First, I’m finding that it is much less distressing to me as I roam from course to course, with various densities of turf, and from dry days to wet days. That’s a huge advantage. Picking the ball a little cleaner make the texture and density of the turf under the ball much less a factor on my trajectory and distance.

Secondly, I’m hitting the ball a little further, particularly with the short irons and wedges. And my distances are much more consistent with my wedges and short irons with this improved trajectory.

Third, the quality of contact with this very slightly descending blow is much improved, and I’m getting lower flight patterns with the shorter irons and wedges, of which I am a big fan.

Mr. Hogan always said that unless you knew how high the ball was going to fly, you had no way of knowing how far it was going to go. Simple, but very true.

The biggest difference I see between the better amateurs and tour players, and the rest of the golf community, is the quality of the flight of the ball. Good shotmakers do not hit high arcing irons shots; their swings produce a ball flight that has a more boring trajectory and flies the same way every time.

So how am I achieving this new crisper, cleaner impact ? I’m focusing on three things:

1) I have moved the ball a little further away from me at address to promote a shallower swing path.

2) I think about keeping my hands lower through the impact zone, closer to my body, so that the club can rotate around my arms with a minimum of unhinging of the wrists. My arms and the shaft never make a straight line in other words.

3) I keep my body core rotating strongly through impact into the followthrough, so that my chest is facing left of the target line at finish.

If you think a shallower swing path and cleaner impact might be right for you, give these tips a try.

I’m sure liking what it’s doing for my game.

This is the part of the swingweight discussion where I expect to get lots of comments, so don’t let me down.

The modern trend in clubfitting seems to “fit” many golfers long and upright, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but can sound off on that later. Today, we’re going to talk about this subject, and I’m going to share my theory on what does and should happen to swingweight.

The idea of fitting a golfer with longer shafts is to accommodate his or her height and posture. Let’s say my friend who’s 6’3” really likes my irons, and wants a set “just like them”, but he wants his own fitting specs of 1” overlength.

So, to accommodate his larger size and assumed strength, I build a set of irons just like mine, except that I cut the shafts 1 inch longer than mine are. Now, that one inch in the butt of the golf club shaft only adds about 2 grams to the overall weight of the club, and other than that, they are EXACTLY like mine – same shaft flex, same heads, same everything.

But, when you put his new irons on the swingweight scale, he goes ballistic, because they read D7-9, rather than the D2 that I play. But you know what ? They don’t feel heavy to him, because they aren’t. They’re just like mine, only altered to accommodate his size.

However, if he insists that they should be only D2, as a clubmaker, I have my work cut out for me. First, I have to grind weight off the clubheads . . . considerable weight, as much as 5-8% of the mass . . . with greatly alters the club, right ? And removing that much mass then makes the shafts play much stiffer, increasing the frequency by a half a flex or more. So, in order to “match” the swingweight, I’ve created a tremendously lighter and stiffer club – nothing like the irons I have that he liked so much.

What I have always proposed is that we think in the concept of “swingweight equivalent”.

If the club is D2 at standard length, it’s going to be D4-5 at ½” over, maybe D8-9 at 1” over. For ladies and seniors, where we’re going shorter, that exact same club will be C9 or so at ½” shorter than standard.

I really think it’s just that simple.

What about all of you ?

As clubmakers, we have to address the subject of swingweight on our clubs, because it is a recognized measure that golfers’ rely on when they make a selection.

And almost all clubs you purchase are going to be in the range of D2, so they all feel pretty much the same in your hands when you waggle them in the shop or hit them on the course.

But as a wedge company, we understand that there are some variations we must take to improve the performance of our products.

Let me share the EIDOLON principles.

First, like most companies, we believe the sand and lob wedges should give the golfer a little more head feel, since these clubs are used in scoring shots with less than full swings, and must provide excellent “motion feedback”.

That’s what the biophysics guys call “feel” – your ability to sense where the clubhead is in the swing, and how fast it is moving. So, typically, you’ll find the 54 to 60+ degree wedges from most companies to be in the D5-7 range. Pitching and Gap wedges will tend to be about D3, just slightly heavier feeling than the irons.

Where EIDOLON differs from all other wedge companies is that we rely on the Rifle Spinner shaft for our steel option, and our own SCoR graphite shaft for golfers who prefer a slightly lighter wedge, which we strongly recommend for those playing lightweight steel or graphite in their irons.

Having your wedge shafts closely match your iron shafts in weight gives you a “seamless” transition to your scoring clubs.

Because these shafts are lighter than the 25-year-old Dynamic Gold “wedge” flex shaft used by other companies, they allow us to increase the mass in our wedge heads, which gives you more “oomph” through impact, especially helpful when you are hitting delicate shots at lower clubhead speeds.

So, because EIDOLON utilizes premium wedge shafts that are lighter than the industry norm, we can increase the mass in our wedge heads without increasing the swingweight.

We’ve never had a customer even notice our wedges are a little lighter overall, because our strict adherence to specification and the playing qualities of these premium shafts delivers the feel that golfers are seeking and are used to.

In the next post, I’m going to talk about what happens to swingweight, and what should happen, when you get fitted for over-length clubs.

In the meantime, keep your comments and questions coming.

For the twenty-five plus years I’ve been in the equipment business, one of the most commonly asked about subjects is that of swingweight. It mostly comes up when a golfer is requesting over-length clubs or is contemplating changing to graphite shafts. So, for the next week or so, I’m going to direct a discussion of this topic. Please chime in to let me know your thoughts and input.

The concept of swingweight was developed by custom clubmaker Kenneth Smith about 60 years ago.

He was trying to figure out how to “match” clubs, and settled on balance point as a way to do so. His swingweight scale had a “hook” to hold the grip end of the club, and a fulcrum 14” from the butt. He created an arbitrary scale of measure that consisted of letters A-F, each letter divided into ten segments, i.e. D1, D2, D3, etc.

When he measured the clubs of the day, he found most of them to be in the D2 range, so that became recognized as the “standard” for men’s woods and irons.

The golf club industry quickly adopted this method of “matching” clubs . . . well, because they had no other way !

Because the longer the shaft, the heavier the head feels, clubheads increase in weight as the shaft gets shorter, so that the swingweight will stay the same. The theory then, and now, is that if the swingweight is the same, the clubs will feel essentially the same in the golfer’s hands.

But let’s look at what has happened since Kenneth Smith invented the swingweight scale:

1) Shafts have gotten longer by at least an inch. In the 1940s, a “standard” driver was only 42-43” long – now most are 45” if not more.

2) Shafts have gotten much lighter. Those old steel shafts weighed 150 grams or more, compared to modern graphite driver shafts in the 55-75 gram range.

3) Golfers have gotten stronger. While clubs have gotten much lighter overall, swingweights have always adhered to that D2 “standard”.

You must understand two very important factors about swingweight.

First, a “point” of swingweight – such as D2 to D3 – is NOT a unit of measure like an ounce or gram.

It takes much less weight to shift a driver one point, for example, than it does a wedge, because the shaft length is such an influence on this measure. Generally, the weight of a single dollar bill is a swingweight point on a driver – not much, huh ?

Second, the overall weight of the club is at least as important as swingweight. Jack Nicklaus was noted for playing a driver in his prime that was 13-1/4 oz in overall weight – very heavy even for that time (most are about 10-1/2 oz now !), while his swingweight was only C9, considered very light.

Swingweight by itself is a rather worthless piece of information !

So, that should get this discussion going. I’ll give you a few days to toss out your questions and comments on this subject and then I’ll begin to address my own theories on swingweight for YOUR clubs.

Use the comments section below to let me know your thoughts and to move this discussion toward the pieces of info that will help you the most.

I had an experience Saturday that I just have to share. As you know, EIDOLON is a small, niche wedge company, and we pride ourselves on having the finest wedge engineering AND building the finest wedges in the marketplace. Our return rate of less than 1% on a Full Money Back Guarantee is testament to that.

But I also have high respect for the tremendous engineering talents at the major companies. Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, Nike and the others have some very good people, and spend millions of dollars creating products that really are engineered to work.

But then the production and accounting people take over. Sheesh.

A rather new acquaintance told me he was having fits with his new top-line wedges which he had just purchased (before he met me), and asked my opinion of why he just was not getting any distance and was dissatisfied with his consistency. I offered to have him bring them to the shop and we’d see if there was a reason for this in the clubs themselves (which is always where I start analyzing a problem like this).

So, he brings in his 52, 56 and 60 degree wedges from one of the “big 4”. He says the 56 is fine; he bought it off the rack and liked it, so he had the pro shop order him a 52 and 60 to match.

Here’s what we found:

His 56* was really 57, which isn’t so bad. The company states that club is 35.38” in length, and his was 35-3/8”, so that’s OK as well.

But his 52*, which the company says is 35.63” long, was only 34-5/8” – a full inch short ! And his 60, which they say is 35.13”, was 34-7/8” !

No wonder he couldn’t hit the 52 any further than his 56, and had trouble with the 60.

I struggled with whether or not to name this company, and just can’t. [But if you are as struck by these oddball “standard” lengths as I was, and you’re the investigative type, you can go online and find out.]

I advised him to take the clubs back to the pro shop and have them sent back for refund or replacement.

The moral of this story is this:

1) Great engineering can be totally wrecked by mass manufacturing sloppiness and poor quality control – and it happens every day in the major companies’ factories.

2) You don’t always get what you think you paid for. Whether you purchase from a pro shop or retail store, before you ever leave with a new club or set, insist that they put it/them on a length board, loft/lie machine and frequency machine to prove that you are getting what you paid for. If they don’t have that, at the very lease you should make sure they have a money-back guarantee, so that you can take them to a qualified independent clubfitter/clubmaker to have them analyzed.

It might sound like I’m on a soapbox here, but this UST V2 shaft is continuing to impress me. I wrote about putting the 65 gram version in my driver, and then liking it so much I put the 75-gram version in my 4-wood, with equally exciting results.

So, after communicating my pleasure to my friends at UST, they sent me the 85-gram version for my 21* Sonartec MD hybrid. The idea was to have a “seamless” blend right into my irons, which are shafted with the 95-gram V2 Constant Weight iron shafts (which I also raved about recently).

Saturday and Sunday were my first two rounds with the newly-reshafted hybrid, and all I can say is WOW ! Let’s see. I hit it inside of 20’ both times I played #6, a 205 yard par 3. Stung it into a tight fairway on my second shot on par fives all four times I hit it. And flagged it on our short par five #1 from 215 to leave me a 20’ eagle putt (which I didn’t hit hard enough, thank you !)

This is not to brag (too much), but to express the delight of finding a product that really performs as well as I expect it to. And to tout the benefits of having your entire set of clubs – driver to lob wedge – shafted in such a way that there is a seamless flow all the way through.

Almost all golfers build their set of clubs in piecemeal fashion – a set of irons here, driver there, one or two fairway woods, different hybrids, wedges off the rack . . . . and they end up with a mess. I can’t put it any more politely. Buying clubs this way gives you little or no chance of having a set of clubs that really allows you to optimize your game.

So, my moral of this story is two fold.

One – if you are an experimenter, you might want to have a clubmaker/fitter build you a driver on this UST ProForce V2 shaft.

Two – it would be a great investment to find a qualified independent clubmaker/fitter to do an analysis of your set make-up and identify why certain clubs give you fits.

I plug these guys all the time, because the “real” clubmaking talent isn’t at the major companies. It’s in your neighborhood. The major companies “manufacture” clubs for mass marketing, not for any particular golfer.

YOUR clubs are just for YOU, so you should make sure they fit.